Family Motto: Spero meliora. (Loosely translated as, "I hope for better things")
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Tuesday, 25 August 2009

The artist David Hockney writes a whimsical letter to MP Austin Mitchell about the smoking ban.

Dear Austin,
I read your piece in the Oldie and I was a bit sympathetic. Of course, I know a lot was exaggerated, and of course it's all nothing compared to the boys of Brussels (and the girls). I think most people thought that as well and had a little snicker about it.

The thing is Austin, that people can be very ungrateful about some things and after all they don't always know about your work to clean up things, clear the air so to speak.

By Jim Tankersley
August 25, 2009
Reporting from Washington
The nation’s largest business lobby wants to put the science of global warming on trial.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.
Chamber officials say it would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” — complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.
“It would be evolution versus creationism,” said William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. “It would be the science of climate change on trial.”
The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court.
The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a “waste of time” and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be “frivolous.”
EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the agency based its proposed finding that global warming is a danger to public health “on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare.”
…
The chamber proposal “brings to mind for me the Salem witch trials, based on myth,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist for the environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists. “In this case, it would be ignoring decades of publicly accessible evidence.”
…
The proposed finding has drawn more than 300,000 public comments. Many of them question scientists’ projections that rising temperatures will lead to increased mortality rates, harmful pollution and extreme weather events such as hurricanes.
In light of those comments, the chamber will tell the EPA in a filing today that a trial-style public hearing, which is allowed under the law but nearly unprecedented on this scale, is the only way to “make a fully informed, transparent decision with scientific integrity based on the actual record of the science.”
Read the complete LA Times story here
Website of the US Chamber of Commerce here

READERS POLL

Do you support the idea of putting the "Global warming arguement" on trial?

He has fathered seven children by seven women in just seven years and abandoned each and every one. Dressed in a tracksuit, jobless 24-year-old Keith MacDonald is enough to put women off men for life.

Doesn't look like it to me. He's just about to marry the eighth.

The binman's son, who lives on £44 a week income support, has never paid a penny towards the upbringing of his children.

Nor does he see them. Apparently it is 'too much of a hassle'. But bride-to-be Clare Bryant, 20, is convinced he has changed and says they plan to have two children together.

Please can any government pass a law for compulsory sterilisation?

The couple have since moved in together in a two bedroom council house in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, and are applying for joint benefits of around £100 a week - leaving the taxpayer to pick up the £60,000 bill for his seven children.

The sad fact of the matter is that they seem to see nothing wrong with their lifestyle. I'm afraid we are going to be stuck with this attitude for a long time until someone takes the bull by the horns and says enough is enough.